so I want to take a trip. but I do NOT want to go to anywhere in the world that has been taken over by Walmart’s and whatnot…
I went to Mexico the last time, was driving around… bam… giant Walmart. why… why does everything need to look the same, sell the same junk.
is there a list of cities, countries that are still… good that haven’t been visually infected with corporate American trash stores?
Germany. Even the “big” supermarkets are tiny and they’re all German owned.
I remember Walmart tried to go into Germany and failed because they didnt understand the culture there. Greeters turned most people off for example.
Actually, Walmart’s “corporate culture” violated German labor laws. And they couldn’t compete with the German chains who were already established either.
amazing news, thank you! I’ll checkout Germany and plan a driving route to Netherlands or something. doesn’t seem that far of a drive tbh. (I drove 7 hours 1 way just for an Xmas party a few weekends ago. lol… 14 in total for a 5 hour party). I know, absurd for Europeans to think about :P
European motorways are a nightmare. It might not look that far on the map, but I’d rather drive from Boston to Brooklin ME on the i95 than from Karlsruhe to Freiburg on the A5.
Apparently Walmart has a location list here https://corporate.walmart.com/about/location-facts. It says it operates in 19 countries so there are many places that do not have Walmarts. Many of them probably don’t have other big stores either.
lol, wasn’t Walmart specifically but I do appreciate it. just corporate giant slabs of concrete in a jungle/nature setting. always meh and makes me just wanna no go there.
Oh! You mean being somewhere with neighborhood scale markets, not just “fuck WalMart”. (Which deserves it).
Yeah, Europe is mostly still rolling relatively small grocery stores of various makes and models. Go to a major Germany city on a mapping app and search for lebensmittel (groceries). You’ll get them everywhere.
I just got back from walking the 80 yards to our local grocery store for a few things to cover tomorrow while I work from home. Total time 20 minutes for shopping because I wandered a bit. It’s wonderfully easy and relaxing compared to when I would do a multi hour Costco->WinCo weekly trip in the US that included dealing with all the driving and stress of huge stores.
I miss Costco’s polish dogs, but that’s about it. The move to Europe was well worth it.
Malawi 🇲🇼 and I think Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 too
I had a great time roving around Tahiti on my way to new Zealand and Australia.
Don’t believe I saw any chain business except a single McDonald’s (which funny enough was packed to the gills)
In Canada: Vancouver, BC. Just don’t go beyond the city limits.
Kingston, ON: if you can get past big box suburbia near the highway, the downtown is small and charming.
Montreal, QC is also very cool. Downtowns of major cities in Canada are generally very nice places to be, but outside there it depends on the city how sprawling the suburbs are.
I’ve never shopped at a Walmart in Japan. It’s really fun to visit.
thanks, trying to leave Canada for a bit. gonna checkout some south easy Asian places and perhaps a small euro tour since they don’t seem to have any
why… why does everything need to look the same, sell the same junk.
Because it is cheap. Build a warehouse, fill it with cheap shelves full of mass produced products. Costs come down due to economies of scale. It’s cheaper to make a kid’s toy if they are all made of plastic from the same mold, and it is cheaper to make buildings if they are all built from the same engineering documents. Stamp your logo on the building so that people know what quality of goods to expect at your store. You can now undercut local stores with lower costs. People shop there because they want to save a couple bucks.
most of them have a walmart or target equivalent though, but not ginormous like walmart.
come to europe habibi!
working on it, might be euro, might be Southeast Asia, haven’t fully decided yet but I would like to visit my mother’s homeland in Maastricht
oh yes Maastricht is cosy! make a road trip out of it. that’s what me and my gf basically do every summer with our van. you can do a lot in three weeks
Walmart tried to get a foothold in Germany, and lost out against about every other supermarket chain here.
Ukrainian here, smaller town. Most stuff is purchased on a street market a.k.a. bazaar. But there are also two competing grocery chains, Tavria V and ATB. It’s like RED and BLU. Left twix / right twix situation. They are everywhere. Anything that isn’t no-name (and is food) is probably cheaper there than at a bazaar. Though I once saw them sell tiny ass stollen loafs for 12 whole bucks because “it’s a slightly niche foreign recipe so it must be expensive” (and same with pretty much everything else in there). Might not sound like a lot but this is a week worth of (other) food, idk how much stollen costs for neighboring countries but went on amazon.de and scrolled for a little bit to find a similar thing for 2 euro.
Bigger cities have one or two really large (3+ story) buildings, which are renting spaces for the two competiting grocery chains, arcade halls, casinos, pizza/burger stuff and small stores selling random foods by weight. When one enters, all sense of time is lost.
I was also bored one day and made this image in response to someone sending the same thing but about Lidl
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